Dear comrade! I beg your pardon for answering your letter so late.

I have been giving lectures in various cities of Switzerland.

I am very grateful to you for your kind reply. I shall be very glad if our collaboration proceeds without friction.

To speak frankly: there was never any doubt that you and comrade Pannekoek are "decent people," according to your formulation. What alarmed us was the sudden change in the arrangement concerning the editorial board. According to the first draft, we were granted editorial rights (editorial board = union of your group (you + Trotsky) and the "Zimmerwald Left"; and in the bureau of this Left we had, as you knew, two votes out of three: Radek, Zinoviev, and myself).

With the change in the draft, we lost our editorial rights and were transformed into contributors.

Of course, we could not dispute your right to work out a statute. But still it is quite natural — is it not? — that we, as contributors, nonetheless wished to have some legal guarantees?

I hope that the matter has now been clarified and finally settled.

Immediately upon receiving your letter, I gave instructions that the dispatchers send you our organ ("Sotsial-Demokrat" is not periodic; since the beginning of the war, issues 33-51 have appeared). Are you receiving it?

Taking this opportunity, I should like to discuss important questions relating to our collaboration.

(1) Our theses (on the right to self-determination)* were sent to you by Radek (please send them also to Gorter: I am writing to him about this in detail in connection with his pamphlet). I consider the Dutch-Polish viewpoint theoretically very erroneous and, in practice, the result of the politics of small states. Cannot our common struggle against old and new annexations (what is annexation?) bring us somewhat closer together? The viewpoint of the Germans, English, Russians is still more important (and objectively more correct) than the Dutch and Polish! Gorter demands "national independence" for the Dutch Indies. Very good! But this is precisely the right to self-determination!! If Kautsky and the Russian Kautskyites (including Trotsky) pose the question incorrectly, this is merely an additional argument against the Kautskyites! (If this question interests you, ask Gorter to send you my letter. I shall be very glad to discuss this question in greater detail with Dutch Marxists).

(2) The German group "Die Internationale." Have you read their theses in the 3rd issue of Grimm's bulletin?[241] In my opinion, this is a decisive step to the right after the first issue of the journal "Die Internationale." Not a word against the Kautskyite "center" — and this is what is chief for the German party. Not a word about a split (Otto Rühle is completely right — and to keep silence about this after his article!!). Not a word about open means of struggle — about illegal organization, etc.

And the phrase: "in the era of imperialism there can no longer be national wars"! This is theoretically incorrect. Colonial wars are national wars. (India against England, etc.) This is — in practice — chauvinism: we, representatives of the great powers, forbid oppressed peoples to wage national wars!!

My conclusion is as follows: "Die Internationale" wants to come to an agreement with the Kautskyites. These theses cannot be interpreted otherwise. And on top of that: Strobel in "Neue Zeit" praises Bernstein![242] Zetkin in "Gleichheit" against the "Zimmerwald Left": a diplomatic phrase against "Bolshevik sectarianism" (!!). The phrase is constructed so diplomatically that no one can understand what our "sectarianism" consists of!!